The Role of Morphological Structure in Determining the Optimal Viewing Position During Visual Word Recognition in Beginning Readers.

Background/objectives: The present study examines the role of morphemic units in the initial word recognition stage among beginning readers. We assess whether and to what extent sublexical units, such as morphemes, are used in processing French words and how their use varies with reading proficiency.

Methods: Two experiments were conducted to investigate the perceptual and morphological effects on the recognition of words presented in central vision, using a variable-viewing-position technique.

Predictive factors of reading in children with developmental language disorder.

The current study aimed to fill the gap in research on factors predictive of word reading in French-speaking children with developmental language disorder (DLD) by finding out whether the same predictors of written word recognition evidenced in typically developing children would be retrieved in children with DLD or if some predictors could be specific to children with DLD, especially in the phonological domain. In total, 38 children with DLD and 44 control children were followed from 6 to 8 years in a longitudinal design including two time points: (1) just before explicit reading instruction, where potential predictors of reading were assessed (oral language skills and reading-related skills), and (2) after 2 years of learning to read, where isolated word reading and text reading were assessed in addition to the assessment of oral language skills and reading-related skills. The study mainly showed that the predictors of reading identified in typically developing children are retrieved in children with DLD except for phonemic awareness; the latter result was probably explained by a floor effect.

Contribution of orthography to vocabulary acquisition in a second language: Evidence of an early word-learning advantage in elementary-school children.

Recent studies have shown that children benefit from orthography when learning new words. This orthographic facilitation can be explained by the fact that written language acts as an anchor device due to the transient nature of spoken language. There is also a close and reciprocal relationship between spoken and written language.

Do French speakers have an advantage in learning English vocabulary thanks to familiar suffixes?

Previous research has shown that languages from nearby families are easier to learn as second languages (L2) than languages from more distant families, attributing this difference to the presence of shared elements between the native language (L1) and L2. Building on this idea, we hypothesised that suffixes present in L1 might facilitate complex word acquisition in L2. To test this hypothesis, we recruited 76 late French-English bilinguals and tasked them with learning a set of 80 English-derived words containing suffixes that also exist in French (e.

New insights into bilingual visual word recognition: State of the art on the role of orthographic markedness, its theoretical implications, and future research directions.

In the past decade, research on bilingual visual word recognition has given rise to a new line of study focusing on a sublexical orthographic variable referred to as orthographic markedness, derived from the comparison of the two orthotactic distributions known by a bilingual reader. Orthographic markers have been shown to speed up language decisions but also, to some extent, to modulate language nonselectivity during lexical access (i.e.

Photograph method fosters direct access to second-language word meaning: Direct evidence from a word-picture matching task.

This experiment was designed to investigate conceptual links directly through a word-picture matching task in children. Participants were asked to indicate between two pictures the one depicting the same concept as the newly learned L2 word (target). One of the two pictures was the target, while the other was either semantically related to it or was unrelated.

Phonological and orthographic reading routes in French-speaking children with severe developmental language disorder.

Purpose: This study aims to assess written word recognition in French-speaking children with severe developmental language disorder (DLD), using a task of reading in silence. The objective is to determine if the balance between the phonological reading route and the orthographic route of these children is similar to that of typically developing children, on the basis of the so-called "dual route" model.

Method: A visual lexical decision task was used in 19 children with severe DLD (average age: 11.

Investigating pseudohomophone interference effects in young second-language learners.

This study aimed to investigate phonological activation during silent word reading in French adolescents learning English as a second language (L2) at secondary school. Grade 6 and Grade 8 adolescents performed lexical decision tasks in English, where we compared processing of nonwords that were homophonic to real L2 words (i.e.

Disentangling cross-language orthographic neighborhood from markedness effects in L2 visual word recognition.

Previous research has reported that lexical access in bilinguals is language non-selective. In the present study, we explored the extent to which cross-language orthographic neighborhood size (N-size) effects, an index of language non-selectivity, should be dissociated from markedness effects, a sub-lexical orthographic variable referring to the degree of language- shared (unmarked) versus specific (marked) orthography. Two proficiency groups of French/English bilinguals performed an English (L2) lexical decision task with three word and non-word conditions: (1) English words with large French N-size/unmarked orthography (price), (2) small French N-size/unmarked orthography (drive), and (3) small French N-size/marked orthography (write).

Grapheme coding during sublexical processing in French third and fifth graders.

This study aimed to investigate grapheme coding during silent word reading in French developing readers from Grades 3 and 5. Children performed a letter detection task in which three conditions were used; the letter to detect was (a) presented as a single-letter grapheme (simple condition; A in phare), (b) embedded within a multi-letter grapheme that is considered as a unit or not depending on context (weakly cohesive complex condition; A in chant where "an" is a unit but not in other words such as cane), or (c) embedded within a multi-letter grapheme that is systematically considered as a unit (highly cohesive complex condition; A in chaud). Results showed a grapheme condition effect in Grade 5 children only.

The impact of cognateness of word bases and suffixes on morpho-orthographic processing: A masked priming study with intermediate and high-proficiency Portuguese-English bilinguals.

Recent studies have suggested that proficient bilinguals show morphological decomposition in the L2, but the question remains as to whether this process is modulated by the cognateness of the morphemic constituents of L2 words and by L2 proficiency. To answer this question was the main goal of the present research. For that purpose, a masked priming lexical decision task was conducted manipulating for the first time the degree of orthographic overlap of the L2 word as a whole, as well as of their morphemic constituents (bases and suffixes).

Phonemic feature involvement in lexical access in grades 3 and 5: Evidence from visual and auditory lexical decision tasks.

Numerous studies have evidenced the involvement of the phonological code during visual word recognition not only in skilled adult readers but also in child readers. Moreover, in skilled adult readers, visual word processing has been shown to be sensitive to phonetic details such as phonemic features (e.g.

The use and nature of grapheme coding during sub-lexical processing and lexical access.

This work aimed to investigate grapheme coding during sub-lexical processing and lexical access. Using the letter detection task in Experiment 1, we compared letter pairs that could be considered as a grapheme unit or not depending on context (referred to as weakly cohesive complex, e.g.

Arithmetic Abilities in Children With Developmental Dyslexia: Performance on French ZAREKI-R Test.

A high comorbidity between reading and arithmetic disabilities has already been reported. The present study aims at identifying more precisely patterns of arithmetic performance in children with developmental dyslexia, defined with severe and specific criteria. By means of a standardized test of achievement in mathematics ( Calculation and Number Processing Assessment Battery for Children; von Aster & Dellatolas, 2006), we analyzed the arithmetic abilities of 47 French children with dyslexia attending 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade.

Automatic phonological activation during visual word recognition in bilingual children: A cross-language masked priming study in grades 3 and 5.

Previous masked priming research has shown automatic phonological activation during visual word recognition in monolingual skilled adult readers. Activation also occurs across languages in bilingual adult readers, suggesting that the activation of phonological representations is not language specific. Less is known about developing readers.

Relationships of French and English Morphophonemic Orthographies to Word Reading, Spelling, and Reading Comprehension during Early and Middle Childhood.

Two longitudinal studies of word reading, spelling, and reading comprehension identified commonalities and differences in morphophonemic orthographies-French (Study 1, =1313) or English (Study 2, =114) in early childhood (grade 2) and middle childhood (grade 5). For French and English, statistically significant concurrent relationships among these literacy skills occurred in grades 2 and 5, and longitudinal relationships for each skill with itself from grade 2 to 5; but concurrent relationships were more sizable and longitudinal relationships more variable for English than French especially for word reading to reading comprehension. Results show that, for both morphophonemic orthographies, assessment and instructional practices should be tailored to early or middle childhood, and early childhood reading comprehension may not be related to middle childhood spelling.

Morphology and spelling in French students with dyslexia: the case of silent final letters.

Spelling is a challenge for individuals with dyslexia. Phoneme-to-grapheme correspondence rules are highly inconsistent in French, which make them very difficult to master, in particular for dyslexics. One recurrent manifestation of this inconsistency is the presence of silent letters at the end of words.

Vocabulary skills are well developed in university students with dyslexia: Evidence from multiple case studies.

Most studies in adults with developmental dyslexia have focused on identifying the deficits responsible for their persistent reading difficulties, but little is known on how these readers manage the intensive exposure to written language required to obtain a university degree. The main objective of this study was to identify certain skills, and specifically vocabulary skills, that French university students with dyslexia have developed and that may contribute to their literacy skills. We tested 20 university students with dyslexia and 20 normal readers (matched on chronological age, gender, nonverbal IQ, and level of education) in reading, phonological, vocabulary breadth (number of known words), and vocabulary depth (accuracy and precision) tasks.

Effects of reading proficiency on embedded stem priming in primary school children.

Prior evidence from masked morphological priming has revealed conflicting findings regarding the acquisition of morpho-orthographic segmentation mechanisms in developing readers. Here, we examined changes in masked morphological priming across grade within a large sample of French primary school children (n = 191, Grades 2-5) and how these effects are modulated by individual differences in reading proficiency, spelling proficiency, and morphological awareness. Target words were preceded by either (a) a suffixed word prime (e.

Third and fifth graders' processing of parafoveal information in reading: A study in single-word recognition.

We assessed third and fifth graders' processing of parafoveal word information using a lexical decision task. On each trial, a preview word was first briefly presented parafoveally in the left or right visual field before a target word was displayed. Preview and target words could be identical, share the first three letters, or have no letters in common.

How language affects children's use of derivational morphology in visual word and pseudoword processing: evidence from a cross-language study.

Developing readers have been shown to rely on morphemes in visual word recognition across several naming, lexical decision and priming experiments. However, the impact of morphology in reading is not consistent across studies with differing results emerging not only between but also within writing systems. Here, we report a cross-language experiment involving the English and French languages, which aims to compare directly the impact of morphology in word recognition in the two languages.

Language proficiency and morpho-orthographic segmentation.

One key finding in support of the hypothesis that written words are automatically parsed into component morphemes independently of the true morphological structure of the stimuli, so-called morpho-orthographic segmentation, is that suffixed nonword primes facilitate the visual recognition of a stem target (rapidifier-RAPIDE) whereas non-suffixed primes (rapiduit-RAPIDE) do not. However, Morris, Porter, Grainger, and Holcomb (Language & Cognitive Processes, 26(4-6), 558-599, 2011)reported equivalent priming from suffixed and non-suffixed nonword primes, hence questioning the morphological nature of prior findings. Here we provide a further investigation of masked priming with morphologically complex nonword primes with an aim to isolate factors that modulate the size of these priming effects.

Word and pseudoword reading in children with specific speech and language impairment.

Children with specific language impairment frequently encounter difficulties in learning to read and in particular, in word recognition. The present study set out to determine the precise impact of language impairment on word reading skills. We investigated single-word reading in 27 French children with specific speech and language impairment (2 SLI).

Children benefit from morphological relatedness when they learn to spell new words.

Use of morphologically related words often helps in selecting among spellings of sounds in French. For instance, final /wa/ may be spelled oi (e.g.

Syntactic comprehension in reading and listening: a study with French children with dyslexia.

This study examined syntactic comprehension in French children with dyslexia in both listening and reading. In the first syntactic comprehension task, a partial version of the Epreuve de Compréhension syntaxico-sémantique (ECOSSE test; French adaptation of Bishop's test for receptive grammar test) children with dyslexia performed at a lower level in the written but not in the spoken modality, compared to reading age-matched children, suggesting a difficulty in handling syntax while reading. In the second task, syntactic processing was further explored through a test of relative clause processing, in which inflectional markers could aid in attributing roles to the elements in a complex syntactic structure.